Archives: Articles From The Community
Irish Immigrants in Wethersfield from 1860 to 1900: Outcasts to Neighbors
January 6, 2023Irish Immigrants in Wethersfield from 1860 to 1900 by Julia Pizzoferrato Wethersfield’s proximity to Connecticut’s bustling capitol, Hartford, made the town a convenient landing place for many Irish immigrants from 1860 to 1900. Both Hartford and Wethersfield offered employment opportunities to new residents either as domestic servants, farm laborers, or …
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About the Author: Julia Pizzoferrato
January 5, 2023Julia Pizzoferrato grew up in Burlington, Connecticut, and graduated from Lewis Mills High School. She completed her Bachelor’s in History at Western New England University in 2022. In the process, she completed a semester-long internship with the Wethersfield Historical Society and researched evidence of Irish immigration into the town between …
Slavery and Wethersfield
February 19, 2021Slavery and Wethersfield by Martha Smart The past is never dead. It is not even past. William Faulkner Sugar and Slavery The popular book, The Witch of Blackbird Pond, written by Elizabeth George Speare in 1957, tells the story of Kit Tyler, orphaned on Barbados, traveling to relatives in Wethersfield …
About the Author: Martha Smart
Martha Smart is a native of Michigan with a degree in history and secondary teaching certification from the University of Michigan. Retired from over fourteen years working in the library at the Connecticut Historical Society, she has been the volunteer librarian at the Wethersfield Historical Society since that retirement
Jared Butler Standish
April 17, 2020Jared Butler Standish by John M. Oblak and Kayla M. Pittman Jared Butler Standish was born on 4 September 1866, the son of James Tryon Standish, Jr. and Jershua McCallen (Churchill) Griswold, and the seventh of their ten eventual children. The Standish family, as others at the time, named their …
The Blue Violet
March 25, 2020The Blue Violet by John C. Willard from the Wethersfield Post, May 3, 1973 “Violets – deep-blue violets! April’s lovliest coronets! There are no flowers grow in the vale Kiss’d by the dew, woo’d by the gale,’ None by the dew of the twilight wet, So sweet as the deep-blue …
About the Author: Claudia Lonkin
March 18, 2020Claudia Lonkin returned to her native Connecticut after completing her university education abroad in Canada. Ms. Lonkin holds a BA in history from McGill University and is completing an MA in history from the University of Alberta. She served as the Collections Management Intern for the Wethersfield Historical Society from …
A Shepard and his Flock: Counting Chairs and Tracking Down Apprentices at the Wethersfield Historical Society
by Claudia Lonkin Beginning in fall of 2019, the Wethersfield Historical Society has been undertaking a collections project, with the aim of organizing, identifying, and photographing pieces in the society’s furniture and agricultural equipment collections. The collections project team, including Curator Kristina Oschmann, Consultant Elizabeth Pratt Fox, and Intern Claudia …
Rediscovering Benjamin Lee Whorf
January 3, 2020Rediscovering Benjamin Lee Whorf by Jim Meehan “She was amazed she even had the language left to think with, assuming people thought in language at all” (“City on Fire” by Garth Risk Hallberg) “Language shapes the way we think, and determines what we can think about.” (Benjamin Lee Whorf) I …
About the Author: Mark W. Anderson
June 6, 2019Mark Anderson is retired from a career of 37 years of administration and teaching at the University of Maine. He grew up hearing stories of Wethersfield from his father, Bill Anderson. One of the treasures in his library since 1966 is The Wethersfield Story by Lois Wieder, his aunt.